


The Wood

by HollyMartins



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Witches, inspired heavily by The Village and The Witch, thepumpkinispeople
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 00:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12570136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollyMartins/pseuds/HollyMartins
Summary: Rumors abound of a witch in the wood, of a stag that haunts the village, of darkness creeping ever closer.Yet because of a certain man, young Abigail Hobbs is unafraid.__In which I borrow heavily from the films "The Village" and "The Witch" in an effort to celebrate Halloween.





	The Wood

**Author's Note:**

> If any of this sounds familiar, it's because I stole some dialogue from my favorite scene in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" (2004). Say what you will about his skill as a director, he wrote a beautiful love confession scene.
> 
> So please do not think I take credit for that dialogue, which is heavily paraphrased from M. Night Shyamalan's work. I don't own it nor do I own "The Witch," another of my favorite atmospheric historical films of isolation and paranoia.
> 
> Also, this turned out less scary than I had hoped for the #ThePumpkinIsPeople fest and more love-y but I couldn't help it. Abigail and Will took me there. This is unbetaed so please be gentle and remember to comment! It means a great deal to me.

Talk of the wood was not uncommon.

How could it not be, when it surrounded the village on every side, watching every move by every resident? 

Tales, of course, were told of the wood; of the creatures that lived in the shrouded land, the ones whose eyes never saw daylight; of wild beasts, ones that man could barely imagine, lurking and crawling and slithering in the underbrush, pouncing on any animal or person foolish enough to venture off the trail and into the darkness.

But the most common tale of all, was that of the witch.

No one had ever seen the witch—at least, seen the witch and lived. But that did not stop the rumors from spreading. 

Some said the witch could fly, could take the shape of a hawk or a bat or something else entirely and if one stood still long enough, one could see it dart across the face of the full moon.

Others said the witch preyed on children, spoiled and ill-mannered ones who didn’t heed what their elders said and were snatched in the night. What the witch did with the children, one could only guess but the guesses were always gruesome.

Still others pointed to the legends told to the village’s earliest settlers by the natives who lived on this land. The natives told of a giant stag, powerful and impervious to fire or bows or even bullets. It stalked the wood and its very presence foretold of death. 

Yet the worst part of the legends was the belief that the stag could shapeshift into a man, and walk upright and speak clearly and even smile. There are ways to determine if a man is the shapeshifting stag but those have been lost to time ever since the last of the natives had been killed.

And finally, there were some who pointed the finger to their own neighbors, claiming whenever a crop did not yield or a child died in the night, that it was their very own friends who were bewitched.

Of course, that wasn’t all the common anymore. Children may talk and gossip and come up with cruel jests about some of the odder folk in the village but that was all children’s games. Abigail did not believe in them. She may have enjoyed the tales as a young girl and delighted in the shivers of she felt at night as she imagined a black shape flying across the moon but she was grown now. She was of marrying age (though few in the village considered her marriage material—an aloof and cold father had seen to that) and had no time for tall tales...no matter how she still enjoyed them.

 

The first hint that something was wrong was the rot.

It destroyed the squash and corn and brought a plague of flies of Biblical proportions. Then there was the sickness.

Four cows, eight goats, and one dog.

The whispers of witchcraft began spreading and though Magistrate Crawford attempted to calm fears by pointing that the rot could easily have killed both vegetables and animals, few were satisfied. 

A week or so later, the child of the Bloom woman disappeared though there were those who said behind closed doors that as a bastard, it was better off. 

It didn’t take much longer for the hysteria to set in and Magistrate Crawford was inundated with tales of shapeshifting thieves in the night, murderers lurking outside our windows, and yes, even sightings of a giant stag in the distance, just at the edge of the village where the wood began.

Abigail was not afraid. 

She did not actually believe in the witch or the stag though she did know that within the hearts of men lay secrets as dark and dangerous as any witchery. That, again, was her father’s doing.

Nonetheless, she went about her chores in the village seemingly unaffected, and often hushed the smaller children who whispered about the village’s physician, alone in the largest house. He is a kind man, she would remind them, and has done a great deal for us. And if you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, I’ll ask him to cut it out.

That usually sent the children running.

If people wondered why Abigail was unafraid, they did not have far to look.   
It was no secret that young Abigail Hobbs nursed a lovesick infatuation with the withdrawn farmer Will Graham. She had followed him, doe-eyed, as a younger girl and always blushed whenever he looked up from his work and happened to glance her way. At least, she had until her father had grabbed her by the arm one day and wrenched her home, reminding her of how young ladies must act and how they belonged at home with their fathers.

If he had hoped to dash her dreams, he was unsuccessful. She merely hid her love deeper in her heart and only risked a look at the older man when her father wasn’t near and fancied to herself that she sometimes saw him gazing at her out of the corner of her eye. 

Will Graham lived alone with his dogs and though most of their neighbors found him rough and uncongenial, Abigail knew him to be kind and patient. At least, to those he liked.

She very much wanted to be one of those he liked but between her father and her own touch of oddness, she knew she had very little chance. Besides, her parents would never let her leave their homestead.

Then Master Verger was found in his kitchen, trussed up like a chicken and with his throat slit. 

Panic ensued and Magistrate Crawford enlisted the help of every able-bodied man to guard the village, day and night. Children did not venture far from their mothers’ sight, young women walked in pairs and never after sundown, men worked with their guns within reach. An air of heavy fear permeated every inch of the village and even Abigail could not deny that something dark was stirring.

It was the second night of the panic and Abigail could not sleep. From her window she could see the torchlight from the lookout post at the edge of the village. She knew Will Graham had spent nearly all of the day up there, silently watching the wood with his loyal dog Winston at his side. Abigail had purposely taken the long way to the market today, just to have the chance to pass the lookout but the older man either did not notice her or feel compelled to say anything to her.

She tossed and turned for an hour or so and had just given up ever falling asleep when she heard it; a noise from the porch outside. She sat up abruptly and stared, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. There was another sound, like that of a creaking board underneath a sure footed step. She stood up and crept to her window, opening it slowly to peek out—a foolish move, she realized but in this moment of fear, she realized she did not care. 

Squinting towards the porch, she saw him.

Will Graham was sitting on her front porch steps, his rifle across his lap, a lantern at his feet, and Winston sitting beside him. 

Abigail blinked, certain she was dreaming. But no, he was still there when she opened her eyes. She was suddenly frozen, unsure of what to do when Winston turned his shaggy head in her direction, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. She swallowed and backed away, but not before hearing Will Graham’s calming voice say softly, “Hush now, boy, let her sleep.”

Abigail stood in the darkness of her room, her heart beating wildly. What did it all mean? Why was Will Graham on her porch at night when there were houses with small children, widowed ladies, and the infirm? Could her heart have been true all this time and her insistence that he sometimes leveled his steady gaze upon her be real?

She swallowed and suddenly realized that for the first time since the murder, she was unafraid. Silently, she crept back to her bed, climbed in, and fell asleep.

 

He was there the next night and the next.

It didn’t seem to matter that he worked all day or was called up to stand guard. He never failed in his silent vigil upon her front porch. 

Abigail wondered idly if any of the neighbors noticed or what her father would say should he find out. But the knowledge that every night, she was watched over by Will Graham seemed to buoy her spirits and lighten her heart. 

He cared for her. Unless...unless he, too, had heard the whispers of some of the local folk and believed it was her own father who had killed Master Verger. Abigail’s heart sank when she thought this. The goat she was milking brayed, annoyed that she had stopped, and she blinked. Perhaps he was not keeping watch over her but keeping watch for her father.

She shook her head and blinked away her tears. She straightened her back and sat up straighter, determined to find out tonight.

 

Sure enough, after the moon rose and the town was silent, Abigail heard the tell tale sound of someone settling on her porch. Without bothering to glance out her window, she sat up, wrapped a throw around her shoulders, and crept down the hall to the front door. 

Will Graham made no movement when she opened the door behind him. Indeed, only Winston turned and he stood, his tail wagging in greeting. Abigail allowed herself a smile at the animal and closing the door behind her, inched to the porch steps and sat beside him.

Only then did Will Graham risk a look in her direction.

In the light of the nearly full moon, she could see the dark circles under his eyes and her heart clenched tight. He turned back to his vigil, saying nothing. Winston walked over to Abigail and laid his head at her bare feet. She scratched his shaggy head and smiled again.

“It is cold,” Will said suddenly. Abigail blinked and looked up at him. “You should be in bed.”

Abigail gazed down at her bare feet and ankles and grinned, unable to imagine what the neighbors would say to this sight: her in her shift alone with a man at night, a man who was grown before she had left childhood.

“Why are you on this porch?” she asked, a side of her realizing that had it been daylight, she would never be so bold.

“It is not safe,” came the quiet reply.

“There are other porches,” she murmured. “You could stand guard at Alana Bloom’s house. She is the one who has lost a child, not I.”

Will was silent again. Winston rolled onto his back and Abigail obligingly rubbed his belly. 

“Have you seen anything?” she asked, desperate to fill the silence. “When you stand guard in the lookout post?”

“No.”

“You have seen no witch? Nor something black fly across the moon?”

“Those are just children’s tales.”

“Not even the stag that is said to haunt this land?”

Will hesitated for just a moment before shaking his head, his eyes never shifting towards her. 

Abigail sighed and sat up, causing Winston to whine.

“How is it you are brave, when all the rest of us shake in our boots?” she wondered softly.

“I do not worry about what will happen, only what needs to be done.”

“And this needs to be done?”

For the first time since she sat beside him, he turned towards her. She wondered, not for the first time, what shade of color best described his eyes.

“Do you think my father the murderer?” she asked, swallowing.

“No,” he said turning away again. “Someone else has done this. And that is why I must stay here.”

Abigail’s heart lifted though she reminded herself that they were having this conversation because a man had been killed. But suddenly, she did not care. She did not think of the villagers or their thoughts and hardships. Abruptly the village and the rumors of witches and shape-shifting stags had ceased to exist and the entire world was this porch with Will Graham, Winston, and her.

It must’ve been the darkness, or perhaps the moon (her mother had often told her as a child that the moon affected people in strange and unnatural ways), but Abigail was overcome with courage.

“When we are married,” she began, taking on an unaffected tone, “will you dance with me? I find dancing very agreeable.”

Will Graham’s face shifted and he turned to stare at her as if he had never truly seen her before. His gaze was steady and all-encompassing. Abigail basked in it.

“Why can you not say what is in your head?” she asked, desperate for him to respond.

“Why can you not stop saying what is in yours?” he replied, his voice coming out in a strained, rushed whisper. “If I want to dance, I will ask you to dance. If I want to speak, I will open my mouth and speak. Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak further. Why? What good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come from my saying I sometimes cannot think clearly, or do my work properly? What gain can rise from my telling you the only time I feel fear as others do, is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Abigail Hobbs. I fear for your safety before all others.”

It wasn’t until she blinked that Abigail realize she had tears in her eyes. And it wasn’t until Will reached out a hand and curled a strand of hair behind her ear, that she realized he had them in his, too.

“And, yes...I will dance with you on our wedding night,” he whispered.

“You would have me?” she asked, her voice thick. “Though I am the daughter of a poor man? A man few like or respect?”

“You would have me? Though I am a poor man that few like or respect.”

“Many respect you,” she insisted.

“But few like me, as you imply,” and Will’s smile touched his eyes and he looked years younger.

Abigail brought her hand to her mouth to stifle her laugh. He took it in his and held it, gazing down at their enjoined hands.

“Will,” she whispered, suddenly lost for words.

“Go back to bed, Abigail,” he said. “It is late and the night is dangerous. I will keep watch until dawn.”

“You must sleep, too. You cannot spend all your nights here.”

“I am where I wish to be. Go on.”

Abigail smiled and, squeezing Will’s hand one last time, stood up. He and Winston watched her walk back into her house, the door closing behind her. 

As she returned to her room and crawled into her bed, she couldn’t help but consider how strange it is have one’s heart so light when there is so much darkness afoot.


End file.
